Accreditation

The Tourism Industry Council, ACT & Region launched the National Tourism Accreditation Program (ACT and Region) on Thursday 9 May 2002 at Parliament House. The National Tourism Accreditation Program (NTAP) is a nationally constituted Quality Assurance program that facilitates the development of quality tourism product and the delivery of quality experiences to visitors and tourists by focusing on issues such as business development, adherence to standards including health and safety and customer service.

Tourism Accreditation is a process designed to establish and continually improve industry standards for conducting tourism businesses. It aims to assist every tourism business to improve the way it operates. Thus, Accreditation provides consumers and the industry with an assurance that a tourism operator is committed to quality business practices and professionalism in all aspects of the enterprise.

Why is Accreditation important to the tourism industry?

If the tourism industry is to achieve success in the increasingly competitive national and international markets, all sectors of the industry must develop quality products and services that will meet the expectations of their customers.

To achieve this goal, all businesses involved in the industry must pay close attention to their business practices to ensure that the services and products offered by them are reliable, consistent and predictable. Customer confidence will be the resulting outcome, which in turn will lead to increased profitability.

“This accreditation is a huge honour for me and encourages me to be an ambassador for tourism in our area and encouraging our businesses to enter submissions, and ensure the industry standard is maintained to an optimum level.”

The development and implementation of a tourism industry accreditation program, based on Quality Assurance principles, which establishes a benchmark of professional management procedures for tourism industry operators, is a significant step in this process.

What is the Australian Tourism Accreditation Standard?

The Standard defines the core business activities and good business practices required by a tourism enterprise to successfully gain Accreditation. The Standard is a checklist of the features found to be essential for a viable tourism business. It is against the key elements of the Standard that a business wishing to become Accredited is formally assessed.

Those elements ensure an enterprise focuses on managing the operator’s obligations – for staff, equipment, facilities, processes and overall performance – to meet or exceed customer expectations.

A business which meets the requirements of the Standard, and gains Accreditation, signals to its customers and to the wider industry that it is committed to providing high quality products, services and experiences.